With the proliferation of infections in healthcare settings that are difficult to cure, it has become necessary to find ways to clean and disinfect commonly-touched surfaces in order to reduce cross contamination leading to hospital-acquired infections. Hospital-acquired infections result in over 100,000 deaths every year in North America, making it one of the leading causes of death. They also cost the healthcare system in excess of $35 billion dollars annually in caring for patients who have contracted infections in healthcare facilities. To combat these high costs, most healthcare institutions have policies requiring frequent cleaning and disinfection of commonly-touched surfaces, including medical and electronic devices.
But providing cleanable surfaces is only one step in proper infection control protocol. Another important step is that healthcare workers must actually follow the prescribed protocols. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Many studies have shown compliance to infection-control protocols by healthcare staff, who are often busy and either forget or neglect to follow the proper guidelines, at less than 50%. Other studies have shown a much higher rate of compliance when the process is actively monitored. But it is impractical and expensive to have people monitoring people; a much better approach would be to have the process monitor itself automatically.
The computer keyboard, for example, has been shown to be one of the most contaminated common-touch surfaces in the hospital, with one study showing 62% contamination. Other commonly-touched surfaces have also been identified has highly contaminated in healthcare settings, such as pagers, bed railings, door handles, telephones, counter-tops, faucet handles, TV remote controls, cell phones, and tablet computers. It is important that the surfaces of these objects be easy to clean and disinfect. But it is also very important that compliance to the actions of cleaning and disinfection by healthcare staff be actively monitored and reported on. This can lead to a reduction in the spread of infection in healthcare settings, potentially saving lives and significant healthcare costs.
In U.S. Pat. No. 7,557,312 Clark et al. (hereinafter Clark) describe a keyboard assembly that has a cover making it easy to clean. Clark further describes a sensor and warning system that is operatively coupled to the keyboard assembly that detects when the number of keystrokes and/or time interval has surpassed a certain maximum and warns the user that it is time to clean the keyboard. The sensor assembly then detects when the user has wiped the surface of the keyboard and clears the warning. This approach is useful in that it prompts the user to clean the keyboard (which it might be assumed results in more frequent cleanings) and also attempts to verify that the cleaning has taken place.
There are significant shortcomings however in the approach described by Clark. For example, Clark is specific to a mechanical keyboard with physical keys that travel at least 0.05 inches, making it impossible or impractical to put cleaning sensors on the entire surface of the keyboard. Instead, there are three discrete sensors dispersed over areas of the keyboard where there are no keys. It is a simple matter for a user to identify where these sensors are and fool the system into thinking it has been adequately cleaned by touching only those sensors. The nature of the sensors described (conductive and capacitive) mean a user could simply lick their finger and touch the three sensor areas in order to fool the keyboard into thinking it has been cleaned (the very act of which would in fact make the keyboard more contaminated). A user may be motivated to do this in order to avoid the more laborious task of actually wiping and disinfecting the keyboard.
In U.S. Pat. No. 7,157,655, Murzanski describes a cleanable keyboard in which a barrier layer separates the mechanical keys from underlying electronics, allowing the keys to be cleaned with liquids without the potential of harm to said electronics. In a preferred embodiment, the keyboard may be rinsed under running water without damaging the keyboard circuit. The problem with such a solution in a healthcare setting is that few workers take the time to unplug the keyboard, take it to a sink, and clean it. Further, there is no method included to cue the user when such a cleaning is necessary, nor is there any way to automatically monitor when the cleaning takes place.